Maxine Angelis woke before the sun came up.

She sat up in bed and stared across her dim bedroom. It wasn't quiet outside; the city was never quiet, even before dawn on a Sunday morning. But it was a little quieter than usual.

She hadn't slept well. She'd had odd dreams, and she'd woken up and been tangled in imaginary conversations in her head. This mystery woman, this hacker, Fitzgerald. Will Ingram, who seemed to open and innocent and genuinely nice. And his girlfriend, who was so suspicious of people.

And Jorgansen, the child molester, leering at her across the table at Rikers.

What the hell had she gotten herself into?

She was still mad at her editor for trying to pull her off the story. But really, once the owner came down on it, Glen hadn't had much choice. In a way, it gave her an out. She could walk away from this and tell herself it was just to save her job. Glen had no choice and neither did she. Move on to other things. Let it go.

But then she'd have to admit that she was afraid of this woman.

She hadn't backed down from HR, or from the mob. She wasn't going to back down from some hacker.

Maxine pulled her knees up and hugged them to her chest. If she wasn't going to give up, what the hell was she going to do?

Trying to follow Will Ingram was pointless. His security people were too damn good. Plus he, or his girlfriend, were way too smart to lead her to anything juicy.

Fitzgerald. She was scary good with computers, sure. But maybe she wasn't quite that good in real life. Her people were ridiculously loyal; even the cops went out of their way to protect her. But Maxine knew where she worked. Sooner or later, the woman had to come back to Chaos, didn't she?

It might take a while. And Maxine wasn't going to get any help from Glen or the other reporters at the Journal. She was on her own. If she was going to stake out the coffee shop, she needed to be prepared. But she could do it. She'd done much harder assignments.

Her mind started spinning through the details. What she'd need, where she could park, whether she could borrow or rent cars, in case it took several days. Yes, she could do it. She could do it.

She could. And so, she realized, she was going to – whether she should or not.

Nicholas Ellis Donnelly – now Nick Malone – spent the night in the Den. He'd watched Moss and his team swap out the stolen bank computers for decoys, and then, as he was about to head up to bed, one of the other burglaries cracked for Irini. He and Northrup waded in, shooting scrambled messages to the local police while they caught the men. At first glance the burglars were simply low-level criminals, hired to steal the computers from the Best Buy in Omaha where Bad Wolf One had taken the call.

They'd dug all night, but they didn't find anything more about the men. They were just contractors, as expected. The apparent leader of the group, a man named Seville, had made a career out of mid-value B&Es. Someone had wired ten thousand dollars into his personal checking account. He'd tried to draw it out in cash, presumably to pay off his crew, and of course that had attracted the attention of the local authorities.

The origin of the wired cash was deeply and cleverly hidden.

The police had recovered the computers from Seville's garage. They'd also found an e-mail he'd sent to his employer, demanding another ten grand for 'storage fees'.

"It's a wonder the boss didn't kill them all," Irini said.

"He might have been working on it," Donnelly answered.

The e-mail trail, of course, led nowhere.

"This one," Northrup said, shaking his head, "is clever as hell."

"Then he's the one we want," Donnelly said.

Omaha had probably chased the big guy away. But New York was still in play.

Donnelly took a certain grim satisfaction in knowing that the investigation rested in part of capable shoulders of Detective Jocelyn Carter.

Reese called in the morning, but there was no Number. Finch sounded distracted and annoyed. John could sympathize; the Machine's increasingly sporadic contacts bothered him, too. But Finch was doing his best to deal with the virus Stanton had uploaded, and he'd made it abundantly clear that there was nothing Reese could do to help.

John got bear claws and took them to Christine's new place. She was up; he got the distinct impression she hadn't slept at all. The boys were still asleep. She made him coffee and they shared pastry and quiet conversation.

The books weren't unpacked, he noted, but the new apartment had a distinctly lived-in feel already. The gentle but undeniable scent of boy in the air probably had a lot to do with that.

Christine knew he was checking up on her, and she didn't object. She took the chance to check on his wound as well.

Satisfied, John took two bear claws for Finch – he'd drop them off after his yoga class – left the rest for the boys, and headed out.

Fusco stopped by the precinct before he went to pick up his son. He had some paperwork he wanted to grab, so he could pretend he was going to work on it at home. He'd already put in one day of overtime, and Moss had promised to call them back in if anyone showed up to claim the decoy computers. But until that happened, he wanted to salvage as much of the weekend as he could with Lee. As long as he had paperwork with him, the captain couldn't bust his chops about it. Much.

And while Fusco usually went out of his way to avoid Simmons, today he was looking for him. He didn't have long to wait; while he was still gathering up his papers, the big man sauntered over to his desk. "Where you been?" he demanded, very low.

"Task force with Moss. Carter's on it, too."

"What about?"

"That bank in the Pulaski Building that got robbed. Feds wanted the computers back."

"How come?"

Fusco shook his head. "Moss doesn't confide in me."

"You find 'em?"

"Yeah. But we're still working the case."

"You let me know if there's anything I should be concerned about, right?"

"Sure. Hey," Lionel said before he could leave, "I got a question for you."

"I look like an encyclopedia?" Simmons snarked.

"This picture in the Journal the other day. The Ingram thing."

"What about it?"

"Picture came from a traffic cam," Fusco explained, ignoring the attitude. "Sounds like this Angelis woman has a source inside the department. So I'm wondering if HR had a hand in that."

Simmons stared at him. "Like HR gives a rat's ass about celebrities."

Fusco shrugged. "Reason I'm asking is, that fixer, Zoe Morgan? She's offering a big reward for the name of the leak."

That got the big man's attention. "How big a reward?"

"Five grand."

"To find out who leaked a picture?"

"To find out who leaked Will Ingram's picture. Or anything else to do with him. That's just lunch money for guys like that."

"Huh." Simmons worked his jaw a minute, considering.

"It ain't worth my getting jammed up with HR for five grand," Fusco continued. "But if you're not a part of it, I figured I might as well poke around."

Simmons sipped his coffee. "Knock yourself out. We got no piece of that pie."

"Good."

"But if you find a name, you run it by me first. Just to make sure it's not one of ours."

"Sure." Which meant, Fusco knew, he'd want a cut of the reward, too.

"If it is one of ours," Simmons continued, probably to himself, "I'm gonna be pissed."

"I'll let you know." Fusco smiled to himself and went back to his papers.

"I don't trust him," Peterson said.

"What's the problem?" Andreani asked wearily.

"Cash. He's gone again."

"He probably went to the soup kitchen."

"Yeah. He too good to eat with us here?"

The crew chief shrugged. "He's just a kid. Don't worry about it."

"I think he's a snitch. I think he's meeting with that Robinson guy, and Robinson's telling the cops everything he tells them."

"Why would he do that? He needs the money from this job more than any of us."

"Maybe the cops are giving him a reward."

"You're imagining things. Just calm down."

"We don't know this kid. Just some kid we picked up on the street. How come you trust him so much? Or are you in on it, too?"

Andreani glared at him. "Are you out of your mind? Why the hell would I rob a bank and then turn myself in?

"When do we get paid? How come we have to wait?"

"Because that's the way the guy with the money wants it. He'll pick up the merch tomorrow, and then we get paid."

"And what if he doesn't pay us? What if he just takes off?"

"He won't."

Peterson growled. "How do you know that? You don't even know what he looks like."

"He wants us for other jobs," Andreani explained. "This is like a test run. We get paid, we're all partners, we're in business. And we don't have to deal with the Five Families or that asshole Elias. Got it? Just us and the big guy. Trust me. This is going to be good for all of us."

"Yeah. Unless that stupid kid turns us all in."

"He's not going to turn us in."

Peterson shook his head again. "I don't trust him."

In the middle of the afternoon, Finch finished the last step of his set-up and leaned back in his chair. He looked around the hidden room. It was tiny, but very well planned and well organized. He had everything he might need at his fingertips. As a back-up to the library, it was perfect.

He tweaked the angle of the right monitor, then the left one. He was wasting time now and he knew it. He half-wished they had a Number. That was wrong, of course. He would not wish a threat on an innocent person just to ease his…

… he didn't even know what to call what he was feeling.

Ennui, he supposed, for lack of a better work.

Gregg Everett had spent the weekend with Grace Hendricks. He'd known about that. Expected it. Been encouraged by it.

Just before noon, one of his trackers had chirped, and Finch had learned that Grace had used her credit card to buy a ticket to go back to Cape Cod with Everett on Monday.

It was a logical progression, of course. They were compatible as a couple. The most sensible thing, before the relationship went any further, was to see how Grace got along with Everett's young daughter. Harold didn't have any concerns on that front: Grace and Elizabeth would be fine together. But it was the most reasonable thing in the world to introduce them now.

It was a good thing, Finch told himself. It was progress toward a fixed and permanent relationship for Grace. A family. She deserved that.

It hurt.

He wanted to tell himself that he wasn't jealous, but that wasn't true. He was mildly jealous all the time, of the life Everett would get to have with her, the one that Finch himself was denied. In unguarded moments he was fiercely jealous. The photographer got to touch her hair, listen to her laugh, breathe in her sweet scent. All the things that Harold had foresworn in the name of Grace's safety were now granted to this man who had given up nothing for her …

He was jealous. He was regretful. He was full of sorrow.

And he was full of joy, too, that Grace would not be alone.

Ennui wasn't the right word for it. Perhaps there was no right word for it.

The one thing that he knew with perfect clarity was that for one of the very few times in his life, he didn't want to be alone.

So he'd checked that the boys were safely gone, and he'd gone to Christine's new apartment to tweak his back-up computer system there. Except it really hadn't needed much tweaking, and she probably knew that.

He could have called John. They could have gone to a movie or something. Reese would not have asked for an explanation, beyond I have nothing better to occupy my time. He would have understood. But here, at least he could pretend he was doing something useful with his afternoon.

He'd left the door open, and he could hear Christine talking to herself in the living room. Not talking to herself, he amended, but to her computer. She had a computer monitor in every room of the apartment, most disguised as art when they weren't in use, and a projector in every ceiling that would put a virtual keyboard of light at her fingertips everywhere she went. The system was voice-activated and capable of speech generation. At Chaos, she'd called it Zelda and the voice had been a British female. Here she called it Alan, and the voice, while it retained its British accent, was a rich male baritone.

Her computer was, in many ways, her roommate. Her constant companion.

Most of the time, Finch reflected glumly, a computer would have been enough companionship for him, as well.

Not today. Not while Grace was moving on with her life. Predictable and expected as it was, and though he himself had orchestrated much of his former fiancée's momentum, it still hurt.

And of course, it was his own damn fault. Christine had called him on making plans for everyone around him, trying to fix everyone's life, and she wasn't wrong. The pain he felt now was purely a self-inflicted wound.

Which didn't make it any less painful.

He stood up and walked to the kitchen. There was a kettle on the stove, warm to the touch. He checked that it had water in it, then turned on the burner. While he waited, he went to the living room.

Christine was standing in front of the fireplace, looking at the computer monitor over the hearth. Pictures appeared on the screen, in a slide show. Handsome men and women of all ages, most with brown eyes and light brown hair.

"Peter," she called, and the picture changed. "Charles." And then, "Jordan."

"You aren't seriously trying to learn all of the Carson family, are you?" he asked.

"Pause, Alan." She turned to him. "I am. Per Will's request."

"There are hundreds of them."

"I know." She gestured to the side table. "Lapel camera, earpiece, two-way feed. And my tablet is loaded in case I get stuck."

"And you're planning to spend the weekend talking Will through the Carson gathering."

"That's the plan."

"Impressive. And ambitious." Finch nodded. "So you're going to the birthday party."

"Apparently."

"What are you going to wear?"

"Doesn't matter. I'm just going to hide out in some back office."

"No. Not with the news stories out there. You can't be skulking in the shadows."

"I'll find something."

Finch cleared his throat delicately. "There is nothing in your closet that's suitable for this event."

"Stalker."

He did not deny the charge. "Would you be willing to let me take you shopping?"

Christine's eyes narrowed as she concentrated on him with a little frown. "That bad?"

He scanned her appearance very deliberately. She wore a white button-down shirt, a man's shirt but in her size, and dark blue jeans. She was also, at the moment, barefoot. It was the standard casual uniform for Chaos employees, and she tended to wear it by default, just as Mr. Reese routinely wore his dark suit with a white shirt and no tie. "It was perfectly acceptable for your role at the café," he said carefully. "But as you move onto the world stage, a bit of an upgrade is perhaps in order."

"Will said I could wear jeans."

Harold thought for a long moment. Then he simply nodded. "As you wish."

"Good." She turned back to the screen. "Alan, continue, please."

A new picture flashed up. "Peter Moynihan," she said.

The computer voice sighed heavily. "Paul Moynihan," it corrected.

"That's not fair. They're twins."

A new picture came up. "Amanda Carson."

Click.

"Adam Carson."

Click. Christine frowned at the picture of the little girl. "Emily Carson," she said uncertainly.

Click.

"Paul Moynihan."

Click.

"Alan, pause please." She looked at Harold. "One dress."

"Of course," he agreed. And under his breath, "And accessories, of course."

"I heard that. I'm not wearing heels."

"Of course not."

"One dress."

"Of course."

Christine growled, but she went to get her shoes. Finch called for a car.

"Anything?" Poole asked from the doorway.

Donnelly startled; he'd been half-asleep. "No. The agent in charge expects a pick-up tomorrow. It's unlikely that anything will happen until then."

"They're still looking for the burglars?"

"They are."

"You should get some sleep."

Donnelly started to argue. Then he didn't. "Yeah." He stood up stiffly.

"And maybe a shower," the director suggested delicately.

Donnelly sniffed. "Ehhh, I can wait another day or two."

"No," Poole said firmly. "You really can't."

Donnelly smiled in exhaustion and headed for the door.

The boutique was painfully exclusive. There was a manager in a good suit who greeted them at the door. Finch watched as the man's eyes raked over Christine and dismissed her, but when he got a good look at Finch's suit his appraisal rose again and in the space of three seconds he was very, very interested in pleasing her.

"How can I help you today?" he asked, very pleasantly, with his eyes still on Harold's hand-stitched buttonholes.

"She needs a dress," Finch said. "For a dinner party. And it needs to be ready on Saturday."

"Of course. We have an in-house seamstress who can handle the necessary alterations." It went without saying, Finch noted, that alterations would be necessary. "Miss Gray?" he called. "Can you help us here?"

Miss Gray was a woman middle years in a beautiful dove-gray suit. "Of course," she said warmly. She focused almost entirely on Christine. "Is there a particular occasion?"

"Robert Carson Junior's birthday dinner."

"Oooh." She nodded. "We've done a number of dresses for that event. Please, come with me." She led Christine toward the back of the shop. Finch followed without speaking; the manager dropped back, but hovered within easy calling distance. Miss Gray stopped and looked her customer up and down again. "Do you wear heels?" she asked practically.

"Not if I can help it."

"At your height, then, I don't think you can wear tea-length without looking peculiar. And for this occasion a mini is probably inappropriate." She glanced swiftly at Finch, clearly still assessing. "So would you prefer floor-length or knee-length?"

Christine looked to Finch. "I think she'd be more comfortable in knee-length," he answered, "but let's keep an open mind."

"Very good. Do you have a particular color you prefer?"

"Not black," he answered before his companion could speak. "Or white. And not pink or yellow."

"Not a big fan of pastels in general," Christine added.

Miss Gray gestured. "I have some ideas. Why don't you have a look around while I pull them, and see if there's anything else you'd like to try?" She moved off, stopped at a second rack and took strapless white dress. "Something like this, perhaps?"

Finch started to nod, but Christine shook her head. "I can't wear strapless or backless. I'm sorry, I should have said that before."

The woman smiled understandingly. "Tatoos?"

"Scars."

Miss Gray nodded. "I'll be right back."

That was an issue Finch had not anticipated. He moved close to Christine as she browsed the nearest rack. "If the scars bother you," he said very quietly, "I know an excellent plastic surgeon. But I believe you'll need to let them heal a little longer."

She glanced at him, surprised. "Oh, the bullet wound. Yeah, I'll think about it."

He blinked. If she wasn't talking about the scars from her recent shooting … "Oh."

"I have older scars," she confirmed, her eyes focused very deliberately on the dresses in front of her. "They're very faint, but …"

"But you're aware of them." Finch nodded. Scars from her childhood. From her abusive mother. "I'm sorry. I didn't realize."

Christine shrugged. "Why would you? You've never taken me shopping before."

She did not want to discuss it. Finch couldn't blame her. "I suppose." He reached for a hanger. "How about this?"

"Too much bling."

Miss Gray came back, carrying six dresses of various colors. "Oh, that's a nice choice," she commented.

"She's already rejected it," Finch said sadly.

"Oh. Well." She gestured toward a dressing room. "Let's see how you like these."

Christine followed her in. "He's not really my uncle, you know."

Finch raised an eyebrow. No one had mentioned their relationship at all. But Miss Gray smiled conspiratorially and nodded as if she was genuinely amused. "They never are, dear."

He settled onto one of the lush couches in the waiting area. The manager appeared immediately. "Could I offer you some sparkling water? A glass of champagne, perhaps?"

"No, thank you."

"Coffee?"

"No."

Mildly confused and a bit put out, the man drifted away again.

Miss Gray came out of the dressing room and put two of the dresses on a return rack. One was dark orange, the other a bright blue: Finch had guessed they'd be rejected out of hand, but he'd let Christine decide. She went back inside.

In a remarkably brief time, Christine came out in a darker blue dress, with a big bow at one hip. She stepped onto the dais and announced, "I'm pretty sure I hate this."

"Agreed," Finch said at once. "But the length is good, for reference."

She studied it in the mirrors. "Yes."

The manager returned with a silver tray containing two glasses and an unopened bottle of Perrier. "In case the young lady gets thirsty," he commented in response to Finch's look. He went away again.

Harold sighed. "Are you thirsty?" he offered.

"Not for that." She smiled mischievously. "Stores are never nice to people," she said. "They're nice to credit cards."

Miss Gray snickered. "You're not wrong," she said, very quietly.

Finch looked at the two of them. They were clearly referring to something, but he couldn't begin to guess what.

"You see this young lady over here?" Christine continued. "Do you have anything in this shop as beautiful as she is?"

The saleswoman fought down a genuine laugh. "Oh, yes," she responded. "Oh, no. No, No. No, I'm saying … we have many things as beautiful as she would want them to be. That's the point I was getting at. And I think we can all agree with that. That's why when you came in here."

Finch raised his eyebrows, and the two women laughed out loud. "Have you honestly never seen Pretty Woman?" Christine asked.

"I … no."

"Because that's almost what we're doing here. Well, except for the piano sex later."

"The what?"

"How can you not have seen it?"

"Rom-coms are really not my thing," he protested.

"Then I have found my perfect revenge for this," she said. She flounced back into the dressing room.

Miss Gray stayed. "I am sorry, sir." He could see her trying to determine how offended he was.

"If you can make her laugh through this … ordeal," Finch assured her, "I am completely in favor of it."

She nodded. "Most women would be very pleased to have someone take them shopping, especially for a new dress."

"She's not most women."

From behind the closed door, Christine said, "Oh."

"Oh?" Miss Gray inquired.

"Oh," she repeated. "As in, oh, I love this, but it's a bit … um …."

"Let's see it," Finch insisted.

She came out in deep gold dress of heavy satin. It had a straight skirt that hung to just below her knees and a bodice that was unadorned except for a pleated accent on the right side. It was sleeveless, with wide shoulder straps that adequately covered her gunshot scars. The dress was really quite modest; it implied a lot more curves than it revealed. It was elegant, understated. It was beautiful.

There was uncertainty in Christine's eyes and her posture as she stepped onto the dais again. Finch could see why. The dress, in its rich, deceptive simplicity, was stunning, and it made the woman who wore it equally stunning.

"Oh," Miss Gray said warmly, "oh, yes."

Harold watched Christine's eyes in the mirror. He knew what she was seeing. He'd seen it once before, in himself, the first time he'd seen put on a custom-tailored suit. Not bespoke, not then, but the first suit he'd ever worn that actually fit him properly, perfectly. He'd look in the mirror and a stranger had looked back at him. This is not who I am, he remembered thinking, but it is who I am becoming.

Her eyes dropped slowly, from the reflection of the dress to the reflection of her bare feet. Her toenails were neatly clipped, but not polished. Those lovely comfortable simple bare feet, beneath that impossibly elegant dress. The contrast was so sharp that it hurt.

Her gaze traveled up again. The woman in the gold dress was not Christine, not yet. But he could see her recognizing that she could become that woman, if she wanted to.

He'd told her years before that her intellect could put the world at her feet. He watched her realizing again that that had been the truth. She could see it for herself now. Her potential was suddenly incarnate. She could be a woman who wore dresses like this. Routinely. Confidently. Carelessly.

All she had to do was accept it.

But she wasn't quite ready. Close, achingly close, but not quite.

Miss Gray said, "No one will be able to take their eyes off you."

Christine blinked, turned her head slightly to meet Finch's gaze in the mirror. Her eyes got a little wider. She was on the verge of being overwhelmed by it all.

"That dress is going home with us," he announced firmly. Before she could protest, he calmly added, "But it won't do for the birthday party."

"It … won't?" the saleswoman asked.

"For that event she needs to be more in the background, I'm afraid."

"Ahhhh." The saleswoman was clearly puzzled, but she agreed because that was her job. "That's going to be a bit of a challenge." She considered, then nodded to herself. "I might have just the thing."

As she moved off again, Finch stood up and went to the side of the dais. Christine continued to stare at her reflection. "I don't know where I'd wear it," she said uncertainly.

"We'll find an occasion," he promised her. He tried to resist, but couldn't; he reached over and pinched just a bit of the waistline between his finger and thumb. "It needs to come in just this little bit. I don't think I'd change the length any."

"Random …"

He reached higher, shortened the shoulder strap the same way. "And this, just half an inch. Three-quarters, perhaps. But that can wait until you find an opportunity to wear it. Perhaps when we officially launch the Initiative."

Christine took a deep breath.

"You can get away with kitten heels," he continued. "Perhaps a little flat with a peep toe." She flinched, and he dropped his hands away. "Again, we have time to accessorize."

She met his eyes in the mirror again. "Random."

Miss Gray cleared her throat discretely. She held up the hanger she carried. "This one?"

It was a wine-colored slip dress, covered entirely by fine black lace, with the same broad shoulder straps as the gold dress, a wide asymmetrical ruched waistband and a moderately full skirt.

"Oh," Christine said.

"Yes," Finch agreed. "Go try that."

She brushed her hand over the gold satin, gave herself one last critical look in the mirror, then stepped down and followed Miss Gray.

Finch looked around, gestured for the manager, who was still hovering. "If you could have your seamstress join us, please?"

"Has the young lady selected a dress, then?"

"Two, I think."

The man smiled politely. Finch could see him calculating his cut of the commission. "Right away, sir."

In a moment, Christine came out of the dressing room again. The black and wine dress fit well and looked lovely; it was sufficiently decorous to satisfy the demands of the occasion without attracting undue attention. He could see the young woman relax into it. It was the right choice, for now.

The seamstress was an older woman with a comfortingly heavy middle European accent. "A little shorter, I think," she said, circling the dais.

"Half an inch," Finch agreed, circling opposite her. He wanted, quite badly, to get on his knees and pin it himself, but the wariness in Christine's gaze kept him on his feet. He did allow himself to step up and pinch up the shoulder straps again. "These need to come up," he said. "That will inform the length of the hem."

The seamstress looked at him critically, then nodded her agreement. "And the waist a bit, I think." She pinched there. "Just enough to make the curves, ya?"

"Ya. Yes."

She got her pins and stepped onto the dais. Finch moved to the other end of the couch, where he could properly supervise the proceedings. He gestured and the manager came, opened the Perrier, and poured a glass. He handed it to Finch, and then, fixed with a stare, backed away again.

Christine watched the transaction in the mirror. When he was out of earshot, she began to quote again quietly. "You know what we're gonna need here? We're gonna need a few more people helping us out. I'll tell you why. We're going to be spending an obscene amount of money in here. So we're gonna need a lot more help sucking up to us because that's what we really like, you understand, right?"

The seamstress snorted in pleased recognition.

Miss Gray brightly, but also quietly, said, "Sir, if I may say so, you're in the right store and the right city for that."

Finch crossed his knees and sat back to sip his sparkling water.